That Summer in Silver Lake: Silver Lake Mysteries, #3

This summer Sylvia Reynolds comes to visit her aunt, famous documentary film maker Asia Reynolds. Fifteen year old Sylvie is in no mood for anything new and her aunt's barn load of animals is way exactly NOT what Sylvie is in any mood for. Although compared with adults, Aunt Asia's livestock quickly becomes more appealing. After being shunted from her best friend's house to her grandfather's to her aunt's she is a little too open to being accepted by the wrong crowd. That wrong crowd being Bertram Thomas, son of an abusive father. Bert and Sylvie have something in common, both were raised without their mothers. This forms a very strong bond between the two teenagers.

Bertram responds positively to the love of pretty, little Sylvie Reynolds. There trying to end that relationship is bad cop, Officer Carlton Thomas, the father of her new boyfriend, converted "bad-boy bully" Bert Thomas -- a former town troublemaker. That's where our story begins...it is no wonder that Bert has an attitude, his dad restricts the talented boy to the point of abuse.

Officer Carlton Thomas comes under constant suspicion for several local crimes. It is the responsibility of his son and Carlton's old friend, the Chief of the Silver Lake Police, to delicately and safely try and round him up.

As Asia helps with the investigation, her new animal menagerie increases from a pretty brown and tan donkey with huge ears, named Pumpkin (or Punkin) and a red, long-haired Chihuahua named Fuzzy Bud, to two new very fiesty, cute goats -- Thelma and Louise, as well as a quickly growing St. Bernard puppy named "Junior", a couple of baby chicks, a duckling and a gosling (adopted from Frankie Franklin's private animal rescue). Seems that Asia cannot help adopting new animals that tickle her fancy.

Officer Thomas is also a professional poker player, but an aggressively unfriendly one. We visit the "High Rollers" Casino in Silver Lake during an increasingly antagonistic game of "Texas Hold 'Em" where the local cop is becoming agitated because he met his match while trying to "take" a few naive tourists in a high stakes game. After this poker match his reputation becomes increasingly under scrutiny, until Dr. Rainier Voss (a former hacker and FBI agent and now a NASA computer expert) is called in again and the chase for Thomas ensues after Asia Reynolds digs up some dirty facts in Thomas's back story and former homes in the Midwest.

The story increases in intrigue as Officer Carlton Thomas rampages around the sleepy hamlet of Silver Lake, threatening and annoying many of its residents.The book ends with a whirlwind chase around the Mississippi river and several shocking revelations that set Silver Lake's laconic summer image on edge.